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Trump’s State of the Union, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez disagrees

Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez joins Brian Williams, Rachel Maddow, and Chris Matthews to discuss Trump’s State of the Union. The New York Democrat criticized the president for what she says was a failure to lay out a clear legislative agenda.

Ocasio-Cortez, like many of her female colleagues, wore all white to the yearly address, in solidarity with her fellow feminists.

This humiliation was covered over with a mixture of vainglorious boasting about America’s ‘greatness’ and his pivotal role in creating a momentary credit boom, based on low interest rates, with its trillions of debt, side by side with a ferocious trade war. The bravado was accompanied by appeals to the Democrats for political unity and in fact it was a veiled plea to them not to close down the US government again.

At the start of his 90-minute speech, Trump proclaimed: ‘We must choose between greatness or gridlock, results or resistance, vision or vengeance, incredible progress or pointless destruction. Tonight, I ask you to choose greatness.’

Only after Trump backed off last week, when he announced a three-week funding bill, was he able to make the speech outlining his ‘greatness’ and his administration’s priorities for the coming year. Trump in fact had to demonstrate a new-found enthusiasm for bi-partisanship and got a warm response from the Democrats when he raised the spectre of socialism in America.

This is Trump’s nightmare; this is what Trump and the US ruling class are clearly scared of today; this is the source of his ‘America First’ policy. In his speech, Trump said: ‘Here, in the United States, we are alarmed by new calls to adopt socialism in our country. America was founded on liberty and independence – and not government coercion, domination and control. We are born free, and we will stay free. Tonight, we renew our resolve that America will never be a socialist country.’

Trump’s speech was a clarion call for the two main bourgeois parties to unite in a class war against the US working class. Trump’s war at home is continued by his war abroad against he workers of the world.

The world crisis of capitalism is driving the US ruling class to war against the working class of the world. The braggart Trump fears the world socialist revolution and his worst fears will be fully confirmed in the days ahead.

Shaima Swileh, who attended the State of the Union this week, had to fight her way past Trump’s travel ban while her 2-year-old son lay dying in a U.S. hospital. She spoke to HuffPost.

IN HIS State of the Union address last week, US president Donald Trump boasted that under his leadership the American economy had undergone a miraculous recovery saying: ‘In just over two years since the election, we have launched an unprecedented economic boom’, adding: ‘An economic miracle is taking place in the United States.’ What Trump left out in his speech was the fact that this ‘economic miracle’ is based entirely on US capitalism running up unprecedented levels of debt – both personal and corporate. This was revealed on Tuesday in a report by the Federal Reserve Bank which showed that the overall debt of US citizens now stands at a record $13.5 trillion: here.